General election

What’s wrong with William Hague

The Tories are facing another huge defeat, and William Hague may be facing the end of his political career

“THE problem for us is that we are simply not credible. Let's face it, we've had it,” says a former Conservative cabinet minister. With less than a week to go to the election, and opinion polls pointing stubbornly to a second landslide defeat, the Tory faithful have begun to despair.

The Tories' defeat in 1997 was blamed largely on sleaze, Europe and the need for a change after 18 years. Since then, memories of the financial scandals that dogged the party have faded: the trial of Lord Archer, former party deputy chairman, for perjury, is the only hangover from that painful time. The arguments over Europe have not stopped, but they have abated. And the electorate has had the change of government it was begging for.

Yet the Tories have recovered no ground. Things look as bad as they did in 1997. Six months ago, most bets were on Labour winning with a sharply reduced majority of about 100, a loss of roughly 80 seats. By the time the election was called three weeks ago, Labour's likely lead, according to the spread-betting firm, IG Index, had increased to nearly 150. The hot money is now on an overall majority of around 200.

The opinion polls suggest a Labour lead of anything between 12 and 30 points. A poll by ICM, the Tory's own private polling company, published on May 30th, puts Labour's lead at 19 points, six points up on the previous week. If that lead were translated into seats on election day, it could give Labour an overall majority of 267, the biggest since Ramsay Macdonald's coalition government in 1931.

The reason, most observers agree, is not that Labour has won the campaign, but that the Tories have lost it. Part of the problem is organisational. The party which used to be known as a great election-winning machine is in tatters. Morale and membership are at a record low. The average age of its members is 62. But that is only a symptom of the Conservative Party's deeper problems.

The Tories were always going to have a tough fight because of the healthy economy. Vernon Bogdanor, an academic at Oxford University, says that the Tories are still dogged by Britain's humiliating expulsion from the European exchange-rate mechanism in 1992. It gained a reputation for being “the party of economic mismanagement” which it has not yet shaken off. But the conduct of the campaign has made things worse.

Enoch Powell once said that every party has to have “a theme to hum”. The problem in this election is that the Tories have chosen the wrong tune. The anti-Europe theme doesn't set feet tapping. Voters aren't much interested in Europe. Even tax, traditionally a strong Tory issue, is lower in people's priorities than health and education, the areas that Labour has focused on.

Nor does the Tories' social conservatism play all that well. Vernon Bogdanor believes that they have failed to keep pace with changing public attitudes on issues such as drugs, asylum and race. “Hague's populism has gone down badly,” he says. “Even if it reflects what people say in the bars, they don't want to vote for it. What they have is a ragbag of policies, some of them very nasty.”

As Labour has moved on to the centre ground, so the Tories have abandoned it. That, according to Edward Heath, a former prime minister, is their mistake. “I think to win sufficient support to become the government again, they will have to broaden their whole approach,” he has said.

It isn't just William Hague's policies that people dislike: it's the man himself. Not since Michael Foot, who led the Labour Party to its disastrous 1983 defeat, has a party leader been more unpopular. “A good management consultant but absolutely no sense of strategy,” says a senior civil servant who worked closely with him in government. In a Gallup poll asking which leader had done the best job in presenting his party's policies, only one voter in six picked the Tory leader. Even among Conservative supporters, only 41% chose him. As Bob Worcester, boss of the polling firm MORI, puts it, “When Hague was chosen over Ken Clarke, the Tories did themselves in.”

Focus groups hate the Tory leader's “flat, grating” Yorkshire voice and his “wally-like” appearance. Women are particularly vehement. “He's a tit,” was one comment from a focus group conducted for the opposition. The Tories understandably are not disclosing their research. But the Daily Telegraph, usually a reliable supporter of the party and its leader, last week published the results of “a dial group”. This is a method used by parties to test the public's reactions to politicians by asking them to turn a dial from positive to negative. The reactions to the Tory leader were “universally negative”. Participants complained that they “couldn't stand his voice”, that he was “not strong” and that he had not got “the right image” to be leader.

The decision that Mr Hague should be accompanied by his wife, Ffion, but that she should not be allowed to say anything is typical of the misjudgments made by the Tories' high command. The silent blonde is out of tune with the times; and the contrast with Cherie Blair's busy pursuit of her own career is painful.

Lord Blake, historian of the Conservative Party, takes a longer-term view. He believes the Labour tide was unstoppable at this election, that the Tory failure is little to do with the leadership and that criticism of William Hague is misplaced. Political parties that have undergone a traumatic election defeat invariably require at least two elections to recover, he points out. New Labour itself is a product of this political truth.

The Tories have reinvented themselves many times before, after similar catastrophes. The recipe has always been the same: a new leader, possessed of political and social imagination, has been able to re-unite a divided party around a new agenda, relevant to a new class or generation of voters. Robert Peel, Benjamin Disraeli and Stanley Baldwin all did it, as did Margaret Thatcher after the two defeats of 1974. Thoughtful Tories are now looking for another such (see article).